Volunteers for tank duty, anyone?

(FYI: Obviously we’re going through a format change. Reader feedback is supposedly being rolled over into Facebook comments. Wish us luck — this is not my call.)

If only Phil Larson had answered Grant Cameron’s email about whether he got a formal briefing on the ET controversy before posting the official White House response on its “We The People” petition site back in October …

Don't worry about getting lost -- you probably can't get there from here, anyway/CREDIT: acus.org

Just look at what happened: Larson’s boss at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren, is having to deal with FOIAs filed by the veteran Canadian UFO researcher. Cameron wants to review “all interviews done by Mr. Larson regarding his blog posting on the ET petitions, all e-mails he received related to the blog posting and his reply, all correspondence with members of OSTP, or other government departments related to the posting before during or after Mr. Larson composed the blog posting for the White House.” He wants “any related notes made by Mr. Larson electronically or in writing,” and “all schedules, e-mail, and phone records … from October 1, 2011 to November 9, 2011. The reply should include all records, documents produced and related to my request, on OSTP assets, such as email accounts, computers, flash drives, discs and servers.”

YOW-za!

In April 2001, Cameron managed to pose a question regarding White House UFO briefings to new veep Dick Cheney via Diane Rehm’s public radio call-in show. Obviously caught off guard, the former SecDef replied “Well, if I had been briefed on that, I am sure it would have been classified, and I couldn’t talk about it.” Cheney recovered quickly and denied he’d attended any UFO meetings, but subsequent events in Iraq would obliterate his pretensions to candor.

Cameron wants to identify the lines of communication that moved Larson — described in a bio as a “research assistant” at OSTP with a degree in aeronautical engineering — to conclude “there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden [about an ‘extraterrestrial presence’] from the public’s eye.” Although Larson responded to two vaguely focused petitions on behalf of the POTUS, Cameron says he’d be surprised if President Obama actually signed off on the statement. But how high up the food chain did Larson’s draft go before it received the White House imprimatur?

Should his FOIAs hook something original, however, Cameron says anyone who thinks petitions or any other direct appeal to the feds for clarity in these turbid waters is dreaming. “That saying about ‘all politics is local’ is absolutely true,” he says from his home in Winnipeg. “Most of the advances we’ve made in the UFO field have come from elected officials who were given political cover by appeals from constituents in their districts.”

What little we know about the seriously disgusting and mysterious cattle mutilations, Cameron reminds us, was instigated largely by ranchers demanding answers from former New Mexico Senator Harrison Schmitt. Voter concerns in New Mexico also prompted Congressman Steven Schiff to ask the General Accounting Office to look into Roswell Incident; the GAO reported that pertinent records had been destroyed without mention of “when and under what authority.” John McCain dropped the ball on the “Phoenix lights,” but Arizonans’ curiosity at least forced him to make appearances. As for the disgrace that became known as the Condon Committee on UFOs — that project was set in motion by House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, acting on behalf of Michigan constituents bearing witness to an eruption of sightings in 1966.

“This is a learning process, and we’re still trying to figure out how to do it,” says Cameron. “You can send all the petitions you want, but nobody’s going to act without political cover. This movement doesn’t have any money and it doesn’t have any lobbyists. So local representatives need to be pressured, but at some point, we need to learn how to stand somebody in front of a tank.”